The penultimate movie of the legendary duo Martin and Lewis, consisting of the singer Dean Martin and the comedian Jerry Lewis. They appeared together on stage for the first time at the Atlantic City Club 500 on July 25, 1946, and would become, in the years to come, America’s most popular comedy duo thanks to a NBC radio series and numerous appearances in television shows and movies. Pardners was their only trip out West.

In the beginning of the film Martin and Lewis are seen as two aging cowboys. The ranch of Slim Mosely (Martin) and his partner Wade Kinsley (Lewis) is attacked by a gang of outlaws known as the Masked Raiders and both men are killed. Their two children, also called Slim & Wade, are raised separately in New York City. In 1910, 25 years after the events, Slim jr. has become a rodeo rider while the inept Wade jr. has become a spoiled momma’s boy. When Slim travels West to take part in a rodeo contest, Wade decides to accompany them because he has always dreamed of becoming a cowboy. The West is not what it used to be, but the masked raiders are still terrorizing the territory and when a new sheriff is needed because the old one was killed by the raiders, the totally inept Wade is elected because Slim has told everybody that he’s a famous gunslinger ...

The problem of the Martin and Lewis vehicles is that they were no more than a series of vaudeville acts disguised as movies and that neither of the two stars had reached his artistic zenith yet. Lewis was recognized by many as the true creative force of the duo, but by this time he was still relying too much on his routines of the simpleton with the high pitched voice while Dino was still working on his unique style that would turn him into the most popular entertainers of the mid-20th Century, second only to Frank Sinatra. Most of their outings are diverting, but hardly any of them is memorable. Pardners is no exception.

As a western parody, it’s an ordinary affair; the script by Sidney Sheldon is loosely based on the Bing Crosby vehicle Rhytm on the Range (also directed by Norman Taurog), but also shows some similarities to That’s My Boy, an earlier movie starring the tandem Martin & Lewis. As always Martin plays the straight guy while Lewis plays the fool, and of course all of Martin’s plans and intentions are frustrated by Lewis’s desire to help him. But eventually they become real friends and also manage to avenge their fathers’ deaths. As a comedy it works by fits and starts; it’s pretty noisy, Lewis overdoing things and Dino singing a couple of humdrum songs, but there are a few great moments, the absolute highlight a hilarious scene - grade A Lewis - of Jerry trying to roll a cigarette. It also has a great cast of supporting players, with Lee van Cleef, Jack Elam and Lon Chaney making their appearance as baddies.

It’s often said that Pardners was ironically titled because the two were already on the way to their breakup. Once good friends their relationship had turned sour, basically because Martin felt unhappy playing second fiddle to Lewis. To squash the rumors of a possible split, a coda was added to the movie: when “The End” appears on the screen, the two shoot down the letters and tell us they’re not ready for the end: they’re still good friends and enjoy making movies together. As we all know, it didn’t work out; the theatrical release of this movie coincided with their last appearance together on stage: on July 25, 1956, exactly ten years after their first appearance, Dean Martin walked off the stage at the New York City Copacabana Club.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

CAHILL: U.S. MARSHALL (1973, Andrew V. McLaglen)
An odd western with Duke as an aging Marshal whose sons go astray because daddy
isn't home enough. They absolutely want his attention and therefore make some
'bad friends' and get involved in a bank robbery. As you might have expected,
things go terribly wrong: nobody was supposed to get hurt, but one of daddy's friends even gets killed, and instead of bad friends, the bank
robbers turn out to be real mean bastards.

It has been
suggested that Cahill, U.S. Marshal was intended as a movie about a cop and a
widower, more busy with his job than with his two growing up kids (*1). Cop thrillers were in the air - thanks to Clint Eastwood's portrayal of Dirty Harry - but apparently it was decided in the last minute to put Big John back in the
saddle, where he belonged. Cahill is definitely a 'post-True Grit' movie: like
the more successful Big Jake (1971), it plays with the new persona Wayne had
adopted in his Oscar…

Of all the oddities of the Western Wonderland of the early seventies, this must be one of the oddest. Like many westerns of the period it was shot in Spain and offers a cast of familiar faces as well as a few surprise appearances; it also tries to outdo the violent and perverted tendencies of the previous decade with lots of blood and a particularly nasty rape scene. With Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin playing the baddies in the style of the Three Stooges, this may sound like a half-baked American pseudo spaghetti, but the film is British, which explains some of the surprise appearances, such as Christopher Lee, Mr. Dracula himself, as a gunsmith, and Diana Dors as a prostitute.

In the opening minutes three outlaw brothers try to rob a bank in a sleepy Mexican border town. It’s an outrageous scene, with so much blood spilled, that it comes close to parody. Director Kennedy had done a few good western comedies (notably the excellent Support your local Sheriff), and the…

Showdown
A western telling the familiar story of two friends ending up on different sides of the law. It was the last western for both Dean Martin and Rock Hudson and the only time they appeared together in a movie. They play two childhood friends, Billy Massey and Chuck Jarvis, who have already drifted apart at the film’s start: Chuck (Rock) is a married man and a rancher, Billy (Dino) has become a drifter and a train robber of sorts. Billy has spent some time in Mexico, but after his return to Texas, he robs a train not too far away from where Chuck lives, not realizing that his former buddy has become the local sheriff.
The story of the two friends is shown in a series of flashbacks, nicely introduced by black and white stills. We see how they grew up together, virtually becoming brothers. They went separate ways after both men had fallen in love with the same woman, Kate (played very well by Susan Clark, charming as ever). Kate initially fell for Billy, the more charming of the t…